Preparation and Preliminary Evaluation of Povidone Single-Chain Nanoparticles as Potential Drug Delivery Nanocarriers

One of the key areas in nanomedicine is the use of nanometer-sized materials as nanocarriers for therapeutic and diagnostic (theranostic) purposes. In particular, nanoparticles (NPs) have attracted a considerable attention due to their small size that confers the ability to be transported more easily through the body. Ideally, nanocarriers would be biocompatible and biodegradable so the involvement of soft matter-based NPs is an interesting approach. Folding individual polymer chains to single-chain nanoparticles (SCNPs) endows the resulting soft nano-objects with promising prospects for drug encapsulation and subsequent controlled delivery. In this work, we report on the preparation and preliminary (in vitro) evaluation of Povidone SCNPs as potential drug delivery nanocarriers. We select Povidone (polyvinylpyrrolidone) as a water-soluble polymer with a large commercial use in medicine, which is biocompatible and non-antigenic as well as safe for oral and topical applications. For evaluation of Povidone SCNPs as drug delivery nanocarriers, we select two drugs with reported anti-cancer activity: (i) Cisplatin, a widely used hydrophilic anticancer agent for treatment of a variety of cancer cells; and (ii) Lovastatin, a lipophilic compound with in vitro anti-proliferative, pro-apoptotic and anti-invasive effects in different cancer cell lines. After showing release of these drugs from Povidone SCNPs, we demonstrate that these nanoparticles can be rendered fluorescent in combination with functional aggregation-induced emission (AIE) fluorophore molecules paving the way to the potential development of theranostic Povidone SCNPs.